Chapter Eight #2
“You know.” Michael waggled his eyebrows suggestively, wished he’d never done that, wished he didn’t even have eyebrows, and then said hastily, “The way you negotiated with that man about the…the haulage. Or hauling. Or carrying or shipping crates…thing.”
It was most unfair of her to look at him with that smirk. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“You know what I mean,” Michael said with a brief smile as they reached a sheep pen. He leaned against the side of it, allowing his gaze to sweep across the animals about to be sold rather than look at the woman who was now openly laughing at him. “Look, I don’t know all the proper terms!”
“No, you certainly don’t.” Phylis giggled, her eyes bright and all the anger gone. “You are a complete dolt, you know that?”
“You are not the first one to notice,” he said ruefully.
And yet he couldn’t help but smile.
What was it about this woman?
It couldn’t have been the trousers. Oh, Phylis looked simply marvelous in a pair of trousers, and Michael had not failed to notice the way the fabric curled around her buttocks in a most pleasing way.
But his Cousin Frank wore trousers almost any opportunity that her parents, the former Marquess and Marchioness of Aylesbury, weren’t around, and he’d hardly ever noticed. He had certainly never felt anything like this.
It couldn’t have been the fact that she was so rude to him all the time. Michael wasn’t exactly sure, but he’d heard tell there were gentlemen who preferred being insulted by their paramours. Michael didn’t particularly go for such insults.
And it couldn’t have been the fact that she was beautiful. There were beautiful women all over Society, and Michael had had the misfortune of being introduced to most of them.
No, it was something else.
Perhaps it was all three together, Michael mused, along with the power of the woman, the bright intelligence and the sparking temper. The power she wielded on her ship was somehow muted on land, but it was still there, rippling under the surface.
“You’re staring at me.”
“I can’t help it,” Michael said, unable to help admitting to it. “You’re so beautiful.”
Phylis flushed, her complexion lending itself to a sudden pink in her cheeks that was most becoming. “So you’ve said.”
“And it’s true every time.”
A sheep butted against Michael’s hand and he leaned forward to stroke it automatically.
“Don’t do th—”
“Ouch!”
“You really are an idiot, aren’t you?” Phylis said with a sigh, shaking her head as Michael shook his hand, as though that would remove the pain of the bite.
He pointed at the offending beast. “It bit me!”
“It was just a nibble,” she said with a shrug, her smile returning. “Why on earth did you want to pet the thing, anyway? It’s a wild animal.”
He answered without thinking as the flock of sheep was herded out of the pen and a pair of rams was brought in to replace them. “I thought it was a dragon.”
Phylis stared, transfixed at his mouth, for at least ten seconds before Michael realized what he had said. “I’m sorry, you thought it was a—”
“A dragon, yes, but that’s not what I… In my family, we call dogs ‘dragons,’” he explained, a sardonic smile lilting across his face. “It’s a childhood thing that’s stuck.”
She was examining him as though he were the dragon. “You’re going to have a difficult time in whatever country you immigrate to, if you think dogs are dragons and you don’t like sheep.”
And yet she was laughing, and Michael laughed with her, and in this moment, all he wanted to do was laugh and be with this laughing woman.
She was all he wanted.
“Besides, just admit that you were distracted,” Phylis said, nudging his arm with her arm.
It was the merest contact. It was over almost before Michael had realized it had begun.
And yet burning, fiery heat seared through him, waves of it, entire tides, his whole body shivering just for a moment at the contact that was over before he could blink and he wanted so desperately to continue.
“Michael?”
“Distracted,” he said hoarsely, then after clearing his throat, he said, “What do you mean, ‘distracted’? Distracted from what?”
When he blinked and the rest of the world came into view, it was to discover that Phylis was looking up at him with a look that was almost…coy.
But it couldn’t have been. Captain Phylis Seaton was never coy.
Until she was. “Distracted from praising my beauty, of course,” she said with dimpled cheeks. “I think you were about to expound on my many great qualities.”
Michael swallowed, all thoughts leaving his body. “Wh-What?”
“What, exactly, do you find beautiful about me?” Was that a flush on her cheeks, or was he just imagining it? Was it the heat of the market? “I thought… Well, it doesn’t matter—”
“It does.” He had reached out and taken her hand in his own.
Perhaps he would not have done so if Phylis had not turned and made to walk away—away from him, something he could not allow to happen. But now that Michael had taken her hand in his, he never wanted to release it.
It felt…right.
“You are beautiful,” he said quietly, the noise of the market fading away as he looked into her green eyes. “Every time I look at you, Captain Phylis Seaton, I see more beauty, and it’s killing me that you don’t see it in yourself.”
“No looking glasses on a ship.” Phylis exhaled, staring as though unable to turn away. “Bad luck.”
“They used to say it was bad luck to have a woman on a ship,” Michael retorted with a wry smile, his pulse quickening as she stepped toward him.
There were only inches between them now, only inches of air that kept them apart. Surely, he could close that gap, pull her against his chest, feel whether her pulse was thrumming like his own.
Surely, she felt something like this?
Phylis’s smile was rueful. “That’s what my father used to say.”
Her father? Michael’s curiosity rose even as his desire to know her better warred with his need to lower his lips to hers. “Your father…”
“But as beautiful as I am—or at least, you think me,” continued Phylis, tugging her hand away from his and turning to look at the two rams rather than him, “it doesn’t change anything. I will not—I mean, there will be no repeat of what happened.”
Michael bit his tongue to prevent himself asking why.
He knew why. He’d caught her off guard, that day in her office. He’d laid on the Chance charm as thick as he could manage, and it had worked. Worked beyond his wildest dreams.
But it had been a dream, that moment. There had been something in the air, something sparkling between them that had belonged to that moment and could not be resurrected merely because he wanted it.
Merely because he wanted her.
Before he could say any of this, or perhaps something a tad saner, Phylis turned back to him, her gaze filled with desire that she evidently did not realize she was revealing.
“Even if I find you quite handsome,” she said lightly.
Urgent need spurted through Michael and he had snaked a hand around her waist before he could stop himself. “Oh, you do?”
“Michael—”
“I love it when you say my name,” he whispered, his mind filled with memories of when she had cried it, cried it as she’d orgasmed into his mouth. “Phylis, I…”
Michael hesitated.
Oh, dear God. He liked her. He really liked her.
Not just in the way one liked a friend, but so much more than that. He liked…everything about her. Her wit, her sharpness, the boldness and harshness she used when necessary and the wild abandon to which she had given herself up when she had craved a release.
And he was in very great danger of liking her far too much.
You’re going to immigrate.
The thought pulsed through his mind so strongly, Michael released her waist.
He was going to immigrate, and what did that mean? Giving up on all ties.
Leaving his family would be a wrench, but he had come to terms with that. He had few friends to speak of outside the family, and there had never been any woman who had caught his attention for more than the half an hour of a dance, or on the rare occasion, a swift tumbling.
But Phylis Seaton?
There was pain in her eyes as she looked up at him, the rejection caused by the removal of his arm clearly potent in her mind. “You…what?”
Michael swallowed. No ties. No regrets. “I wonder what they’ll sell these rams for,” he said quietly, turning away from her to look at the beasts that moved restlessly about their pen. “I wonder what their freedom is worth.”
He knew what his would cost. Perhaps the only chance of ever feeling this way about a woman again.